Yoani Sánchez’s Italian-language translator for the past six years, Gordiano Lupi, on Friday (May 9) published an article blasting the Cuban blogger for being arrogant, mercenary, and greedy. Its title: “Yoani Sánchez: Her new journal is my freedom.”

The article, which appeared in the independent website Il Gazetin, is so revealing — coming from a man who knew Sánchez for a long time — that Progreso Weekly has translated it from the Italian and is publishing it here. Our translator’s clarifications appear [in brackets.]

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Yoani Sánchez has terminated her contract with [the Italian daily] La Stampa and has made me a free man who, until yesterday, could not say what I thought, in view of the fact that I translated her. Now that I no longer have any connection [with her] and that the interests of the world’s richest and most rewarded blogger are in the hands of her agent, Erica Berla, I can remove the pebbles from my shoes. They were hurting me.

Havana Journal Inc., a Massachusetts corporation since 2004, owns the domain name YoaniSanchez.com and points it to the Yoani Sanchez section here at HavanaJournal.com. We are an active Cuba information resource since 2003 and we use this intellectual property in order to inform our readers about Yoani Sanchez news.

We were recently asked to relinquish this intellectual property (the inquiry has nothing to do with Progreso Weekly in any way) to someone claiming to represent Yoani Sanchez. We do not doubt this person’s professional relationship with Yoani but we do not give up our intellectual property because someone simply asks us to do so.

YoaniSancez.com is not for sale. Havana Journal Inc. has legitimate rights and interest in the domain name and it is being used in good faith (fair use) to provide information about this world famous Cuban citizen.

We support her efforts to disseminate information in Cuba and we support her right to travel, speak and write freely in and out of Cuba.